Kwangali, or RuKwangali, is a Bantu language spoken by 85,000 people along the Kavango River in Namibia, where it is a national language, and in Angola. It is one of several Bantu languages of the Kavango which have click consonants; these are the dental clicks c and gc, along with prenasalization and aspiration.
| Kwangali | |
|---|---|
| Rukwangali | |
| Native to | Namibia, Angola |
| Region | Kavango West |
Native speakers | 152,000 (2018)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | kwn |
| Glottolog | kwan1273 |
K.33[2] | |
Maho (2009) includes Mbunza as a dialect, but excludes Sambyu, which he includes in Manyo.
Phonology
editConsonants
edit| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | tʃ | k | ||
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | ||||
| voiced | b | d | dʒ | ɡ | |||
| prenasal vl. | ᵐpʰ | ⁿtʰ | ᵑkʰ | ||||
| prenasal vd. | ᵐb | ⁿd | ⁿdʒ | ᵑɡ | |||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | h | ||
| voiced | β | v | z | ||||
| prenasal vl. | ᶬf | ⁿs | |||||
| prenasal vd. | ᶬv | ⁿz | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||
| Trill | r | ||||||
A dental click type [ǀ] may also be heard,[how many consonants is this?] being adopted from the neighboring Khoisan languages. The clicks may also tend to be heard as alveolar [!].[3]
Vowels
edit| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i iː | u uː | |
| Mid | e eː | o oː | |
| Low | a aː |
Short vowels of /i e o u/ may also be pronounced as [ɪ ɛ ɔ ʊ].[4]
References
edit- ^ "Kwangali". Ethnologue. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
- ^ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
- ^ Dammann (1957)
- ^ Sommer, Gabi (2003). Western Savanna. Nurse, Derek and Philippson, Gérard (eds.), The Bantu languages: London & New York: Routledge. pp. 566–580.
- Dammann, Ernst (1957). Studien zum Kwangali: Grammatik, Texte, Glossar. Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter
- Derek Nurse & Gérard Philippson, The Bantu languages, 2003:569.
Books
edit- Rukwangali/English for Children, Éditions du Cygne, 2013, ISBN 978-2-84924-310-7
- Biblical passages in Kwangali
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